Billy Graham’s Australian ministry – a personal reflection

“My first encounter with Billy Graham and his team was in Perth in 1959.

I was 22 years old and a youth counsellor at the Perth meetings. His influence was profound and many people owed their faith or its renewal to his ministry.

It’s important to remember it was only 14 years after the end of WWII and our family, like many others, had billeted a young American sailor at our home in 1944 from the submarine base at Fremantle. Sadly his boat went missing protecting Australia. Billy arrived in Australia just six years after the Korean War ended (1950-53) in which many Australians served again alongside US troops under the UN banner, and so we were still in awe of the Americans, their movies, their Coca Cola and their ‘can do’ attitude. …”